HE Dr Ahmed Nazif, the Prime Minister of Egypt praised Dana Gas’ commitment to its Egyptian operations this week, citing the Sharjah firm’s rapid results and highlighting several recent discoveries.
Hamid Jafar, executive chairman of Dana Gas, met with Egyptian leadership figures at the Economist Conference’s sixth business roundtable, in Cairo this week. The roundtable, which was attended by the Prime Minister and nine members of his Cabinet, brought together leading businessmen, investors and key decision makers to discuss issues pertaining to the current economic situation in Egypt.
Jafar also met Egypt’s Minster of Petroleum, Sameh Fahmy to discuss energy issues of common interest and to talk specifically about the country’s future requirements as well as Dana Gas’s plans for its operations in Egypt.
“Despite the challenges of being the most populous country in the Middle East/ North Africa Region, Egypt has made huge strides in the gas sector through the progressive policy of the Petroleum Ministry that both encourages investment and maximises local benefit,” said Jafar, speaking at the event.
“Egypt has doubled its gas reserves in the past five years, and is meeting the needs of the large domestic market while also exporting gas through both pipeline and LNG, with over 60 companies active in its upstream sector,” he added.
Dana Gas marked its entry to the Egyptian energy sector with the US$1.1 billion acquisition of Centurion Energy in 2007. The company is the Middle East’s first and largest private sector natural gas company, and became the sixth largest gas producer in Egypt in 2008.
“We have since made substantial targeted investments in exploration and development, which have yielded extremely encouraging results. We have doubled our reserves in Egypt, and announced our latest discovery just this morning. In addition, we are making investments in a new LPG plant in the Gulf of Suez,” explained Jafar.
“As a regional company, we are focused on local use and benefit from gas, and in this context are proud to be jointly developing with the Government the Egypt Gas City Project, which will increase the local benefit from gas through maximum job creation and investment for sustainable economic growth,” said Jafar.
Dana Gas announced last month it is also moving ahead with plans for the exploration and development of the Western Offshore concession in Sharjah.
This follows the signing of a 25-year concession agreement with government of Sharjah in March 2008, giving the firm a 50% working interest in the project. The agreement covers a total offshore area of over 1,000 square kilometres (386 square miles), and includes the Zora gas field in Sharjah, which was discovered in 1979.
Under the agreement, the work programme carried out by Dana Gas will include the drilling of 3,000 feet of horizontal section in each of the two wells originally drilled by Crescent Petroleum, testing and completing both wells, the installation of offshore platform for immediate processing and production, and the transportation of the processed gas via 25 kilometres (15 miles) of offshore pipeline. The agreement also provides for important exploration works within the concession area, including geological evaluation studies, followed by seismic surveys and the drilling of exploration wells.
